Idlib Chemical Massacre: The Blasts

Idlib Chemical Massacre 4-4-2017: 
The When and Where: 
The Blasts
June 5-?, 2017
(rough, incomplete - last edits June 10)

Introduction: Refuting Postol
I'm again forced to address MIT professor Dr. Ted Postol's work. He remains prolific in criticizing the accepted opposition narrative of the April 4 alleged sarin attack. He continues to raise many seemingly important points, which carry the credibility of his extensive education, experience, and reasoning skills, as displayed in his important work with MIT's Richard Lloyd on the infamous Ghouta attack of 2013.

Postol's continuing reports on the Khan Sheikhoun incident enjoy wide dispersal and serious attention, making him arguably the leading public critic of the story used by President Trump to launch deadly and illegal airstrikes against Syria. To supporters of the terrorist narrative ("opposition activists," governments and think tanks, controlled "human rights" groups, corporate media, etc.), Postol's work is seen as the pinnacle of their opponents' arguments; if one could take that down, they might be left with nothing. All this pesky doubt could be cleared up, and the blame once again firmly pinned on Damascus. 

And as it happens, Dr. Postol keeps making what I consider serious errors, giving those terrorist enablers an easier time than they deserve, and making it harder for the rest of us to know the right questions to keep pursuing.

At first I was sure he just had some mistakes, and he did correct himself on the backwards wind reading. But more have followed, and most recently, he made some actually strange claims, and quite loudly as usual, in this May 30 report The New York Times Video Analysis of the Events in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017: NONE of the Cited Forensic Evidence Supports the Claims Again this was widely republished with little or no criticism, and re-posted in a perhaps different version at Pat Lang's blog  (this post somewhat began as a comment there).

I admit I didn't read the whole thing, but it seems the core of his argument is: the building damage we see is too minor to explain the large smoke plumes we see, and therefore the opposition story has been proven to have core discrepancy calling the rest into doubt. He reasons those blasts must be from larger bombs, 500-1000 pound conventional high-explosive ones. And such a blast would flatten the stricken buildings and heavily damaged others nearby.

He produces some science and formulas to back this, and they're presumably valid (I can't easily verify). My questions are about the presumptions that lead him to apply those calculations.

Like others have, he argues the videos of the April 4 incident were filmed earlier, partly because the predicted wind direction differs from that seen on the videos. But look at what this misses about the rebel story - they seem to think it's the exact opposite of the wind we see, or exactly the same direction (the real one?) but read backwards, like a badly executed false narrative might do sometimes, when you're lucky... Dr. Postol himself initially made that common mistake, first reporting this predicted direction exactly backwards, in a common bit of confusion over to vs. from. So ... the opposition story has been proven to have core discrepancy, calling the rest into doubt.

But Postol hasn't drawn attention to this (even after I e-mailed him the link and a short summary), as he now tries to do the same thing in another way. To do this, he proposes quite a coincidence; at some point between February 21 and April 6 (the dates of comparison satellite photos), each of three spots in Khan Sheikhoun suffered some damage that's too light for the blasts we see on video. These may have happened at different times in that span. And then on this non-April 4 morning, larger blasts must have flattened three ... areas ... that should be exactly the same three buildings, though he thinks not. But they must be those spots or very, very close to them; the areas those plumes rise from are known, geolocated from multiple camera angles with reasonable precision, to within a few buildings. And in each case, the most exactly indicated building is the one with the supposedly insufficient damage.

Many know about the two views of plumes 1 and 2, but I for one was slow to note and compare a second view for plume 3 as well. Here's how that lines up, using Michael Kobs' map here, the two relevant lines bolded in blue: a northern view's line of sight to the plume, and a western camera's, lined up with two minarets. A third line from the distant north camera is less helpful, not included. Between these two closer views, it's fair to say the smoke plume must originate in the white circle here. The place at the pin's tip is examined in detail below.

Any difference will be slight, and all three plumes are placed like that. But Postol suggests they're all lost on their lines of sight from the north, with no side-anchors in existence. He seems to think the spots will never be found, and thus never compared. I think he's right. There is no other spot to look than the ones indicated, and he's ruled those out. That's likely to cause confusion.

To accept Postol's new argument and the visual evidence, we have to accept that between Feb. 21 and Apr. 6:
- these 3 spots were each lightly damaged,
- then all 3 were hit again and flattened in one event around 6:45 am on a non-April 4 day
- that day had very similar solar angles to April 4, and must be close to it, and can't be after. 
- and yet, as seen on April 6, only the small damage appears on the still-standing buildings. That is, nothing in either alleged attack completely destroyed them, like Postol assures us the video proves.

If these aren't the damaged spots, as he contends, we know they must be very close by, certainly within the mid-sized frames the NYT video used, which I show below. But as Postol notes, there are no totally destroyed areas in any of these images.

So... is all this careful line-of-sight work wrong? Even Postol's set-up trying to cast doubt on the accepted lines of sight (those set early by Bellingcat), comes out quite similar. It's hard to reach a very different conclusion while also showing your work. He shows his work, and so we can see where at least one small error leads him to his sharpest criticism, about the line of sight to plume #2. It wasn't that sharp anyway. (Thanks to Andrew for the tip and graphic I used here)
This here is the worst he could find - and this is why (note the purple marks in the lower right corner). Otherwise, everyone pretty much agrees on THIS view's general line-up. He doesn't address or seem to know about the various other views.

Or ... did Postol just call the plumes and the expected damage wrong? Is this minor-seeming damage actually from the strikes that caused those pillars of smoke with the mushroom caps? I'd like a real expert to step in and explain how it all matches - I can't. But clearly something's wrong with the logic of what Postol proposes.

As for the bomb damage, I admit it seems smaller than it should be (to me, a non-expert), even ignoring the math of bomb size and looking at those plumes. But isn't it possible to correlate it if we shift the presumed type of weapon? I'm not versed enough to say, but interested in getting it to match up if possible - not to support the opposition's lame narrative, but just to keep in line with the relevant evidence. And for all the arguments I've heard, I still suspect this video is from April 4, and they faked all their blasts and "sarin fog" in real space on the right day. But luckily, their script-writing department read the wind backwards, and there may be other slips we can catch with a correctly aligned exploration of the evidence.

Plume Type

Dr. Postol bases his argument on presuming the video scene, by the large smoke plumes, shows 500-1000 pound conventional high explosives bombs being used. We know where each plume rises from, so we see the damage doesn't match that assessment. I'm not sure even the plumes suggest what he says. 

Here again are our three smoke plumes seen from the north, each with a distinctive, if imperfect, mushroom cloud shape (especially blast 3, on the right side). I think this is a hot, high-energy blast  in a wide initial dome shape, that rises fast and cools - outer material tumbles out as the hot middle rises, making a shape like a donut with an erupting jelly center. Or at least, a big lumpy section with a much narrower "stem" of rising smoke beneath it. Plume 3 has the clearest mushroom shape, while plume 1 is the most lumpy and chaotic shape, as well as the largest. As Postol notes, this is perhaps 2 or even 3 bombs in one spot, and as we'll see, that could be the case. (compressed panorama view for more detail)

 checking a few videos for comparison:

Postol's examples are #3 and 4, and the rest are culled from this compilation video of  traditional bomb blasts in Syria - all tend to mid or dark gray in color - general bulging and rolling in all directions laterally, and spiking up in different spots, usually with a distinct rising center. That has some tendency to form a fast-rising hot ball of smoke on a stem, but in a context of general chaos, and lacking a well-defined shape.

 

Now let's compare that with plumes from fuel-air explosive (FAE) blasts - reference videos: 1, 2, 3

examples 1 and 2 show the detonation and the plume after some moments, the others just the plume. #6 is from the same scene as #2, in the distance.  

The shape is similar, but with a more distinct mushroom shape - more discrete, dome-shaped top, thinner stem with a clear cut-off, less lateral spread and less random tumbling of smoke in the blast area. Obviously the color is lighter, pretty much white in these examples.The gray one is on a very cloudy day, barely lit at all.

What we see in Khan Sheikhoun may be something else, but if I had to pick one of these two, I'd take fuel-air - the color is more yellow-beige than these examples (only partly from the early sunlight, which still leaves the "white cloud" seeming white in comparison). I would not pick conventional high explosives for plume 3, and only maybe for plumes 1 and 2. Postol, who should know more than me by a good margin, chose this for all of them. I could be wrong, but I'm stating disagreement on this point.

Now to the site damage images, to explain the above, and to see what can be seen.
Not a very complete review, so it may expand and change as I see more (time allowing and/or with help)
for areas 1, 2 and 3 in context of the basic crime scene, see the when and where.

Damage Area 1 

This is the most obvious damage of the three, as seen from above - not indicating, but the spot is generally centered. As with the others, February 21 is shown at left, and then April 6 on the right. We see here the north wing of a small building is partly flattened, and a west wall facing on the vacant lot may be broken with a gap in it.

Note also a possible rectangular hole in another roof of the building to the east, possibly from a second bomb in this same spot. It seems to be at the very southern edge of the roof, and including the upper south wall, which we barely see here. It may not be a hole, but it's new, distinctly black, and similar in scale to the other holes we see in areas 2 and 3. Is this why the plume appears so much bigger? It's two bombs in one area? Or just that the building hit fell apart, letting the smoke spread wider, where the others had it more contained in a building first -

rotated view (north indicated) with colored areas matched to different scenes from this video and this one.

Red area - collapsed - at right is a detail image of the collapsed slab and other remains (some things in garbage bags, little clues). 

I suppose the blast force, a decent one, might have starter about at the far wall, blown more to the north and east through that room, taking out the slab's supports. The wall onto the magenta room is intact but stressed - the force would blow through intact doorways, knocking out weak outer walls in the magenta and purple areas. 

West end - structure marked in white had a blue tarp roof, torn down, and a wall that's been damaged (marked wrong in orange in the satellite view). The field marked in gold is just for reference - that's the edge of this area.

Notes and oddities: And thee are some stray bricks across the roof, some visible at the edge, and a few further back. I'm not sure how those would have gotten there, but pondering it. After some thought and a look at the Feb. image, I guess they were lifted up, mortared into a wall along the south edge at least, and apparently around the whole house, both wings, before that image. Then this careful work, on the north wing, was disrupted in the blast, scattering those bricks across the roof and off the edge.

The final piece of wall left in the purple area has an odd angle, looking blown in by an external blast. There are also chips as if from external shrapnel. But all else suggests the main blast was outward, so maybe the chips are from something prior...

Add 6/8-6/11: The outer wall seem made of concrete, not brick. And outside we see mainly bricks, which will be from the rooftop wall. There are some chunks of concrete, however, nearest the collapse of the red part, or in front of the magenta room. At the purple, room we see roughly no concrete outside, but a fair amount inside, along with a possible window frame. That's a wall, blown in. It's next to the chipped and blown-in looking last section. The Magenta room has an even bigger pile of busted wall inside, perhaps including some large household appliance.  That seems at least as blown-in. The red room, we cannot say.In front of the magenta room is an apparent crater - curb damaged and earth missing in the same area, now covered with debris (blue box).

That's just outside.  Note the white line of ejected debris, perhaps, in the satellite view; that could be some kind of blast-back effect showing the impact point, and maybe the direction of fire, from the north. To hit this close to the building, it was either fired from the north (and was weak) or was dropped from above, and stronger. But in the latter case, there would be far more damage across the street, so fired, from the north, it is.

So ... I think something hit here, outside, first. It blew in all walls, probably on the red room as well. The yellow curtain in the purple room was pulled back, shielded behind that slap, but may be a bit scorched on its right edge, which was maybe exposed a bit. The weapon seems to have a wide but not very powerful damage pattern, and not that forceful, or severely blunted in the act of breaking the walls apart. I show this with the blue arc, with apparent burn marks continuing (lighter blue). This, I think, is consistent with a fuel-air explosive's detonation dome.  

Then, maybe nothing else, or maybe something hit the red area, perhaps from the southwest, making it collapse, and sending the rooftop wall scattering to the north and east. The initial blast would disrupt the wall, but mainly with the north side scattered back out of view. The opposite scatter we see would be the other side's wall, and everything scattered, being re-scattered and sent towards and over the north edge.<end 6-8/6-11 add>

The neighboring building with a possible fresh hole in its roof: any damage is unclear. The blue garage-type doorway may show some damage, with most of the rolling door torn out, but no sign of it blown out on the street, and little or no rubble - was the door blown in? is this more signs of an external blast at some point? Cracks, chips, and light smoke stains are seen here. That jagged vertical shape on the left by the tilting pole is a former tree.

FAE scorching? Only moderate signs in the effected building, along edges, which makes sense. The east building seems smoke-stained across its north face. I'm not sure if the ground should be, but it looks darker in that same area - seen from space, it looks like an angled dark smear in front of the place.Above I show how this all lines up with a blast wave emanating from the blue-marked crater area.

Add 6-11: And finally, the weapon: a remnant is shown - apparently the socket for a screw-on filler cap, similar to the piece seen at the crater but cleaner metal (newer make?). Rough welding suggests maybe improvised? Here, it seems the fill would be fuel, to use for the fuel-air explosion, rather than liquid sarin. At the crater, well, it's some liquid that looks kind of thick and black...<end 6/11>

Damage Area 2

I should mark the earlier image not clutter the evidence. Some might wonder why it seems so rectangular. Full photo from inside looking up at that hole - note the rectangular grid of reinforcing bars (rebar) - this is lacking in the weak outer walls blown in at area 1. This is just the roof's edge and the inside of the building's north wall - from the size of the hole and in the grid of rebar, it was a small weapon, but heavy - it fractured the concrete of the roof and upper wall, flung the rebar down and out in all directions, and would then hit the ground, directing most blast towards us and the south wall (see below). :

There appears to be no damage to north wall - one line mid-way is probably from twisting rebar smacking the surface. But this view is centered high, and there seems to be damage lower on the walls, but that looks older and painted over (?), and it's mostly off-frame. There's rubble outside, but it's from the bricks used to cover over these openings, which should be a door between two windows, of a now unused entrance. Did some ethereal pressure wave knock off half that cover without burning the walls or chipping the gray paint? (or is it all just the same gray? Is it possible that lots of some light-colored smoke did this fresh paintjob?)

So not just from space, but even from the site imagery, we see just a hole in the roof. No sign of blast damage here, aside from a generalized pressure wave... but here's what could make sense otherwise:
- the munition was possibly dropped, but the damage pattern suggests not
- a projectile from the north (towards the camera here) just barely hit that roof, at an uncertain vertical angle.
- If there's any left-right direction evident, I'd say it's a bit to the left, or from a bit east of north (looser damage area on left side of roof, and the brick push-out is worse to the left, or the right as seen from outside). But this isn't clear; perhaps it's a bit the other way, or just north. 

If there's any damage to north wall, it's very low, while the south wall is more heavily damaged and higher up, that would be more consistent with an angle of a rocket fired from the north - radial blast will hit the north wall very low, and the south wall higher, perhaps including the ceiling.  Steep angle shown here, close to vertical - if closer to horizontal as I suspect, the pattern will be even clearer.

Can a rocket do that? It would have to very heavy as well as fairly small in diameter. In fact this reminds me a lot of whatever hit the warehouse in Urm al-Kubra, Aleppo, during the attack on the UN-SARC Aid convoy last August (ACLOS). To me that entry angle seemed too horizontal to be a gravity bomb as alleged - but it did pierce a reinforced concrete roof like this, with a small hole, so it was heavy, narrow, and/or falling from quite high. And it apparently had a delay fuze to only go off after piercing the roof, when it hit the ground and made a small crater inside, hurled a mid-sized ignition fireball, and peppered the room with tiny fletchettes of shrapnel. It's blast force clearly weaker than alleged gravity bomb OFAB - cardboard boxes just inches away were just lightly jumbled, punctured by the shrapnel, and singed in spots. As far as I know, that's an unknown or fantasy weapon, but it would explain that scene, and perhaps this one.

But in the photo above, we can't see the most likely damaged areas, and they present the oddest scene - a major hole in concrete, then seemingly no damage. But my guess is there's a fair amount everywhere but in that frame.

Here's an external view from a BBC video that  confirms the windows and door here were bricked over, and plastered, with the other window still invisible on the left.

Here, looking inside, we can see what would be the left-hand wall seen above from inside, the back corner, and part of the back (south) wall. Enhanced a bit, it seems evenly gray and undamaged - in the upper corner, there are possible singeing or moke stains near the ceiling. Further over, a faint dark patch in the middle. Not much to go on, but it's something. (BTW the kind of minor shrapnel damage seen in Urm al-Kubra would be simply invisible in a view like this)

(note: it's said Amira Saleh's children were here while she was at work, but were taken by her brother before the strike - but he took them to Abdelhamid al-Yousef's house, where they died from the sarin. Hmm... ACLOS) (and Andrew shows it's just west of this spot where an activist was photographed putting a dead pet bird into a bag. This adds a little detail on the spread of rubble into the street.

<add 6/10>A new video shows rubble being collected inside this home (ostensibly for CW testing), along with some dead chickens. Panorama in 2 pics - it's clearly an entryway by design - bench along west wall, and little else. Note the bench seems chipped:

Above is a glimpse of a window in the south wall (see inside, far left). Here we see more of this and a south wall seeming free of marks. East wall is seen, maybe smoky. Any tiny marks might still be invisible (the quality is low), or just absent. There is a lot of rubble on the floor, and more low-wall damage suggested. There's our north wall damage, apparently - from the windowsills down. That should blow out, but that seems like maybe too much debris inside to be just from that hole in the roof. The extra pipes or sticks are also unclear. Some kind of metal grate (or wooden - shoe shelf?), no dusty or damaged, is laid atop the debris. Might mean nothing. The curved metal object marked ???, clearly, is a mystery.

Still not sure what to make of this scene. There should be some damage or sign on that south wall, but it should be high up. We may see a glimpse in the BBC view above, almost at the ceiling, and I'll add the last surface we have remaining to examine is the ceiling itself.<end 6/10>

Seen from above, all is intact. But it's likely a fire was started. low blast force out the north side - apparent rubble spread across the street - but even more blast and smoke would escape to the south, and encounter a wind to the N-NE. The roof seems stained by smoke exiting south  and blowing - almost due north. Worth more consideration.  

Note the divided smoke plumes suggested here - one plume from the north side, out those uncovered exits, and one from the unclear south wall, probably bigger and connected to the initial swell captured in the "mushroom's cap" - seen from the west, this plume has a divided double strand near the top (just below the cap). That may be a coincidence, or a clue that this peculiar scene is just where that smoke plume is coming from.

Damage Area 3 

Here again we see fresh damage - (on April 5 videos it seems fresh, and satellites show it happened between Feb. 21 and then. And again, it's right where two clearly-set lines of sight to plume #3 intersect. You should find the smoke's origin here. From above, all you see is a raised stairwell structure mid-building torn away, and a decent amount of apparent rubble out into the street. That didn't seem adequate to Dr. Postol or the people he talked to.And it may be too little for that presumed 500-1000 pound bomb - but still, it me exactly what did cause that extra mushroomy plume #3.

Seen from street level, it becomes clear not all damage is visible from space.

damage - stairwell knocked down, pillars chipped, walls blown out, smoke on right-hand wall -

how this might line up is unclear - more analysis coming 

- the roof-level damage is interesting (smoke and damage on middle pillar, light smoke higher up on near one -  chip in wall, low wall on building to the NW is knocked down all around), angling up, too high to scorch the far pillar, high enough to hit that higher neighboring wall.

- dropped bomb? if it detonated widely at roof level, and kept detonating widely on the way down - ?

3C -  fuller photo - slab to the north (right edge) - small building there was apparently flattened - more force to the north than to the south - note inside, white star (light fixture) on ceiling and wall to the left with missing window.

3D - standing inside, under that white star, seeing attached room (behind left wall above) with another star on the ceiling  - little damage, lots of rubble - one strange hole in the far corner, a little smoke at the foot of the bed, perhaps - there are two white stars on the ceiling - minor damage to buildings across the street (shrapnel marks, windows broken)

IF there's a compass direction to this damage, it's clearly to the north, maybe northeast - so fired from the south, southwest, or SSW. 

Plume Bend

 (added 6/10) The smoke plumes seen rising from areas 1, 2, and 3 all show a sort of bend in the "stem" of the "mushroom," which seems different seen from varying angles - I reason that this is th initial direction of smoke, aside from up - the lower part, below the bend - hot column of smoke rising from the hot and dusty attack site - it would start as a huge detonation fireball, somewhat smaller than the mushroom cap we see. It would rise straight up if it were a dropped bomb, but here it seems to have started at some angle, suggesting these munitions were NOT dropped, but rather fired over a distance, on rockets or missiles. trajectory it was moving on set the direction its blast expands the most (all blasts tend to expand equally in all directions, but trajectory will distort that in its direction). This is important, and so I try to establish that initial angle - its opposite is the direction towards the perpetrators. Of course, we've tried this with the building damage as well, so this gives us a comparison angle. If they say the same thing, we're more likely onto something here.

After the first angled rise, I reason, the smoke column then perpetuates itself, having created a sort of chimney in the air along that line. This sucks up billowing smoke and dust from below, and channels it up behind the earlier particles. Higher up, the wind cools it, slows it rise, and increases the wind drag as it hits higher wind speeds, all of which sets the upper plume drifting in more of the wind's direction, and slowly scattering. So unless that initial fireball angle and the wind direction happen to be the same, you'll see some bend or curve between the bottom and the top.

To measure these, again remember that evident left-right movement is just half the real direction, with more movement towards or away from the camera being harder to discern.

Areas 1 and 2:

The west view (a camera to the southwest, actually) shows most  direction - clearly to the right, and some degree towards or away from the lens. Here the wind is largely to the left, so the bend between somewhat opposite directions is also quite pronounced.

The north view (a bit to the northwest), shows less initial bend - a bit to the left, but varying, and the higher we look, increasingly from the wind. With a real bend clearly involved, the lack of much visible suggests more of it is on the towards-away axis from this view. The west view shows it's away from the north camera.

These two important impacts show the same thing - if these were fired rockets, they came from the north-northwest. This is about what the building damage at each site also suggests. This is also close to - or perhaps the same as - the north view's line-of-sight. So if they had managed to film these "Assad bombs" being dropped, we would have heard and perhaps seen them flying in over the camera, or being fired from just a few meters away.

Area 3
(forthcoming)

Conclusion
Later...